Deee-Lite | Groove Is In The Heart (Change Request ReVision)

For this ReVision, I reconstructed the most famous and successful song from one of the leaders of the New York New School of the 1990s. 

Released as the first single from their debut album—World Clique—“Groove Is In The Heart” was released in August of 1990, and shot Deee-Lite into the stratosphere. This track’s crossover appeal was by design—claiming the number one spot on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play in 1990—featuring guest vocalists Bootsy Collins and Q-Tip. 

This song—remarkable—was a beacon of creative sampling, as one of the first radio played pop records to feature such an extensive list of source material, including snags from Bel-Sha-Zaar, Herbie Hancock, Vernon Burch, Ray Barretto Theme From Green Acres, Ralph MacDonald, Billy Preston, The Headhunters, Hateful Head Helen, and even more. 

I remade this mimicking the programming of the original—which was a major challenge just to get the percussion sections to emulate a multilayer of samples being summed—added additional drums and rearranged the song to be a longer version that I always wanted. 

I used the Roland JV-1080 to reproduce the horn sections and saturated everything to 1990. This was produced with @EventideAudio effects processing, including UltraReverb, SP2016 Reverb, and Tony Visconti’s Tverb.

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Deee-Lite | Groove Is In The Heart (Change Request ReVision)

Andrew Emil // Change Request 

A preeminent artist of Chicago's 3rd wave, Andrew Emil is one of house music’s most staunch stalwarts. A concert-trained percussionist since age 11, he earned a chair in his native Kansas City Symphony before eventually moving to Chicago. 

As a traditional musician, Andrew Emil has worked as a keyboardist, arranger, and an orchestrator on recording sessions and productions, cutting his teeth at the former Chicago Trax Recording Studios. 

Credited on over 200+ recordings, his composition and studio productions have ranged from concert works and sound design to film scoring stages and hundreds of releases of electronic music productions. 

After a life in live music performance, from orchestra percussion sections to punk rock ensembles, he crafted a reputation for House Music productions in Chicago under his own name, as well as Broadway & Wilson, and Uptown Tones. 

One of the earlier innovators of the “Jackin House” genre under the Broadway & Wilson moniker with Jeff Bloom, Andrew is never content to stay in one place or style of musical thought for very long. 

He is the only recording artist to do production work simultaneously for Derrick Carter’s Classic Music Company, Mark Farina’s Great Lakes Audio, Gene Farris’ Farris Wheel Recordings, and four-time GRAMMY nominee Steve “Silk” Hurley’s S&S Records.

A string of double-digit singles for prominent labels, including remixes for artists such as Common, Kanye West, Little Louie Vega, Jamie Principle, Steve "Silk" Hurley, Iz & Diz, Fast Eddie, Shalamar, Roland Clark, David Morales, Colette, Amp Fiddler, JT Donaldson, and Gene Farris, to name a few. 

2012 saw the emergence of his epithet, Change Request, with the Change Theory EP on four play music. This new persona allowed the freedom to explore hybrids of mid-tempo live instrument focused jazz-dance-fusion. 

Following this release was “After All” on Seasons Recordings, with another single thereafter featuring house music icon, Chez Damier, “I Wanna Go Back”, including a remarkable rework from Glenn Underground, on Glenview Records. 

The ever-growing collection of songs and musical dialogue eventually led to the conceptual album series from Change Request. Each full-length effort containing a completely separate story and scored via its own unique incidental subtext. 

Emil created AstraVox Music with the award-winning Los Angeles-based composer, Mr. Nathaniel, as a home for his increasing catalog of incidental dramatic musical compositions. 

www.andrewemil.com